FROM KILWORTH TO THE RAF
TAKE-OFF
IT was 16.40 hours on March 5th, 1945 - a mere two months before the end of the war in Europe - when Lancaster heavy bomber PB872 and its crew of seven began to taxi down the RAF runway at Scrampton airfield in Lincolnshire. Designed to conduct nighttime operations, the Lancaster bomber had shown its mettle two years before when deployed on the famous Dam Busters mission. It was now loaded with a heavy bomb over a ton in weight in the bomb bay and, in addition, six smaller 4lb incendiaries.
The pilot, Jim Bailey, was a mere twenty years old, two of his crew were just nineteen and the oldest was just twenty-seven. This was the flight engineer, Flight Sergeant Jim Howard of Kilally, Kilworth, the only married man on board. He sat on an uncomfortable collapsible seat immediately to Bailey's right and had charge of the fuel selectors and gauges on a panel behind him. Conditions were very cramped and the two spars of the wings further back made moving down the fuselage extremely difficult. Further, the men were subject to numbing temperatures - removing a glove could lead to frostbite - and the upper and rear gunners had to wear electrically heated suits to prevent hypothermia.
Their destination was the German city of Chemnitz in eastern Germany not far from the border of Czechoslovakia and the mission was designed to relieve the advancing Russian army by destroying facilities in the city that could support a planned German troop build-up. In what was called ‘Operation Thunderclap 2’, Bomber Command sent out 498 Lancasters on that night as well as 256 Halifaxes. In addition, they sent eight Mosquitos that would serve as target markers.
The weather forecast for the night was bad and the crews were warned of severe icing and strong winds. Before that great wave of aircraft filling the English sky had left the various bases in England, nine had crashed. One had actually come down on a primary school in York, killing five and injuring eighteen. No one aboard PB872 could be confident of returning, but they no doubt were hopeful that their luck would hold. This was the luck that saw them survive their five previous raids, the first of which to Dresden which saw them return to home base with the fuel indicator needle showing zero. Sergeant Howard, whose duty it was to monitor fuel consumption, had been proven right in his calculations. At least six others of their squadron didn't show the same measure of confidence and on crossing the Channel had opted to touch down at bases near to the coast.
Jim Howard passed through Kilworth Boys’ National School early in the 1930s and on leaving Mr O’Neill's class went on to join the Patrician Brothers in Tullow, Co Carlow. A bright student, it is likely he probably would have been well suited to teaching, but after a period of time it became clear that religious life was not for him and he left. (In contrast, fellow Kilworth man, Denis Lomasney, stayed and ultimately became Provincial of the Patrician community - not just in Ireland but throughout the world).
In due course like many more Irish at the time, Jim moved to England and when war broke out, he enlisted in the RAF and trained as a flight engineer. Promotion to sergeant followed and now on his sixth mission with PB872, he and his pilot were assured of an officer’s commission on their return.
ACTION STATIONS
Approaching their target the wave of bombers began to suffer heavy losses from night fighters and anti-aircraft guns. Jim Howard and his colleagues pressed on perhaps praying that the ack-ack fire exploding all around would not claim them. But another challenge soon emerged: their compass had developed a fault and became useless to them. Further, as a crucial matter of protocol in such circumstances their auxiliary ground mapping radar was strictly forbidden - its use anywhere except over a target area would inevitably have alerted German defences of an oncoming main bomber wave. Lost in the dark, drifting south and away from the main stream of bombers, the wireless operator, Jack Dixon, desperately listened out for an unlikely breaking of RAF radio silence that would enable his navigator resolve their dilemma. And Jim Howard at the same time had the crucial task of adjusting fuel transfer in a specific sequence from his tanks and keeping pressures and temperatures under observation.
They were hopelessly lost, but they were not lost to the Luftwaffe. Vigilant German radar had locked on the Lancaster and a night-fighter squadron was despatched to intercept. It is recorded that their commander, Major Walter Borchers, positioned his Messerschmitt bf110 on the blind spot directly under the Lancaster. Using his upward-firing cannon he penetrated the wing of Jim Howard’s plane, between the two engines on the port (left) wing. We can only imagine the horror felt aboard as the fuel tank began to blaze. Pilot James Bailey prepared for a crash landing. But then the wing began to melt with the intense heat and the outside engine broke off at the point at which it had been pierced by the cannon shells.
Two crew members succeeded in baling out as the Lancaster came down low over the tree tops while the air raid sirens were blaring below in the village of Rossbach (now Czech Republic’s Hranice). Witnesses of the event have recorded that long flames streamed from the port wing of the Lancaster as it descended. On hitting the ground it exploded into a monstrous ball of fire as the six incendiary bombs aboard detonated. The small fire brigade, the mayor and various other villagers raced through the woods nearby and on to a meadow where the wreckage lay strewn around. There they watched in horror as the Lancaster blazed.
Minutes passed and then when all danger had passed, they set about the grim task of recovering the seven bodies. Having officially identified them, they buried them in a corner of their local graveyard and the local police recorded location and details of the incident.
Sadly, the final desperate efforts of the two men who had time to bale out proved to be of no avail: apparently they had moved too slowly along the cramped fuselage and past the constricting wing-spars of the Lancaster and when they jumped they were too low and too late to enable their parachutes to open.
REPOSE IN PRAGUE WAR CEMETERY AND A
MONUMENT TO THEIR MEMORY
When the war ended Rossbach/ Hranice was absorbed into what is now